On March 10, 2023 from 9:00a - 8:00p, the Taubman Visualization Lab (TVLab) is hosting TRADE SHOW – a one-day series of free and public lectures, workshops, installations, forums and tech demos focusing on emergent visualization technologies and their spatial applications.
Increasingly powerful, a ordable, and intuitive, XR technology has seen sizable public and private sector investment from industries as diverse as education, healthcare, transportation and entertainment signaling that extended reality is diversely applicable, and here to stay. In the fields of architecture, design and planning, the story of XR’s applicability is still unfolding.
TRADE SHOW convenes a cross section of thinkers in academia, the professions, and industry to shine a light on current speculative and applied XR design and visualization practices and to spark conversation about adaptations yet to come.
Where?
Informal, interactive and approachable, TRADE SHOW events, staged concurrently throughout Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, will sponsor unexpected discoveries across diverse topics. Events will be held in Taubman College’s TVLab, CMYK review space, and the commons.
Transitioning from speculative to ubiquitous within a few short years, extended reality and related spatial visualization technologies are o ering designers unprecedented experimentation and communication capabilities. These emergent media, promising to transform spatial experience for the foreseeable future, are shaping everything from the modeling of environments to the delivery of immersive analytics. Pedagogically, they o er new engaged learning opportunities that provide a distinct understanding of space, systems and phenomena. XR is transforming professional practice, too. Across most mid to large scale practices, XR-related job postings for Design Technologists, 3D Game Artists and XR Specialists have grown increasingly common. The Corporate Tech Industry, meanwhile, continues breaking ground at a formidable clip, making co-navigation of these emergent tools if not critical, then unavoidable.
The TVLab o ers a flexible, collaborative and accessible research environment with many options for experimentation in the digital and physical realms. Located on the second floor of Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (2022-2023), we work with emergent technology to expand access to digital representation tools and techniques across degree programs.
In pursuit of new modes of storytelling, design research and hybrid automated processes, TVLab engages a breadth of tested and yet-to-be-discovered applications of groundbreaking visualization tools.
“Stack of turtles each wearing VR set in a fish tank”
Midjourney
HealthVisualizing(p.20)
* All Trade Show events will be held at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning: 2000 Bonisteel Blvd. Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 *
* Weekend workshops hosted by Ayaz Bursai (p.28), Pierre-Christophe Gam (p.30) and Gibson/Martelli (p.32)
Welcome Breakfast Counter-AI Imaginaries (p.22) dj Roger Th@t & Bao Boys
- 3:30p - 5:00p - 6:30p
Commons Commons Commons
India Futures Project: Walking around India in 2035
Extended Reality: Extended Education
TOGUNA WORLD and the Sanctuary of Dreams
The works of The Busride, which have been focused on speculative fiction, design, heritage conservation, and futures research since 2003, aim to construct a hopeful vision of the future rooted in Indian culture. Through their examination of various social and cultural experiments, the collective has envisioned a future India that draws upon themes from the nation’s past and utilizes ancient traditions as a source of inspiration and progress, rather than a hindrance. In this lecture, the journey of the collective will be explored, highlighting their social experiments and the development of a new movement called Indofuturism. Basrai will discuss how visualizing bold and innovative ideas can positively impact current practices, shape policy-making, and empower activism.
On Thursday 04 May 2022, the University of Portsmouth (in the United Kingdom) opened the Centre for Creative & Immersive Extended Reality (known locally as CCiXR).
CCiXR, using investment worth over £7 million (approximately $8.5 Million) provides our students, academic colleagues and industry partners with opportunities to engage with cutting edge technology including:
• Virtual Production and Mixed Reality Studio with a SmartStage®
• Studios relating to Extended Reality (XR), Motion Capture (Mo-Cap), Music Technology & Sound, Photogrammetry & Scanning and Volumetric Video.
CCiXR is the UK’s first integrated facility that brings together a full suite of the latest XR technologies under one roof, but, what does all of this mean for architecture students studying at the Portsmouth School of Architecture…?
This short presentation, by architect educators and researchers Dr Antonino Di Raimo and Martin W. Andrews, will share projects and digital artefacts produced in CCiXR and discuss how the new technologies contained within the Centre will be used to transform the learning experience of architecture students at the University of Portsmouth.
4:00p - 5:00p
Commons
Martin W. Andrews Dr. Antonino Di Raimo
Can the metaverse be used as a tool to help us envision and manifest the future of our dreams?
Named after the shelter under which the Dogon people of Mali, in West Africa, traditionally gathered to discuss and exchange ideas, TOGUNA World is an ever-expanding laboratory of dreams dedicated to the investigation of the future.
The brainchild of polymath artist and future thinker PierreChristophe Gam (aka Gam A Gam), the mixed-media Art installation centres around a metaverse divination portal informed by IFA, an ancient spiritual tradition from west Africa as a way of accelerating our imagination towards envisioning the kind of future we want. Existing both as a digital and a physical mixed-media Art installation, the platform encompasses a metaverse dream world, a digital divination portal and a multimedia platform which aims to serve as a forum for possible futures.
The artist will introduce TOGUNA WORLD and the Sanctuary of Dreams.
5:30p - 6:30p
Commons
Pierre-Christophe GamCommons
TVLab Commons
TVLab
TVLab
TVLab
Visualizing Health: Immersive and intelligent imagery in medicine and architecture
XR in AEC: Transforming the Way We Design and Build Counter-AI Imaginaries
Products of Urbanism
Spaces for Performance
Intersections: digital materiality and creative practices
This panel will o er a provocative discussion on emerging technologies for visualization and how they can impact the field of medicine and architecture to lead to better health. Experts will bridge the fields of XR and Nursing, Lidar and Surgery, and AI and Patient Perception. Moderated by a practice leader at the intersection of design and health the panel will dig into the potential and possibilities that new advances in visualization technology allows us, as well as the perils and risks. Join us for an interactive session that poses the questions the profession and academy are beginning to wrestle with to open new pathways for change.
Time Location
Participants
9:00a - 10:00a
Commons
Panelists
Michelle Abersold
Robert Adams (Lidar)
Dawn Gilpin (Lidar)
Andrew M. Ibrahim
Joy Knoblauch (AI)
Jonathan Rule (XR)
Moderator
Upali Nanda
Extended reality (XR) has the potential to reshape the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries, o ering new methods of design and construction, including high-fidelity digital twins, process simulation, and monitoring construction activities. However, despite recent developments, there is a need for more research to develop a seamless integration between XR technologies and the current systems and tools used in design and construction, as well as to address the role of the human in an augmented future. This event will bring together industry leaders, researchers, and innovators to examine the latest developments in XR and its potential to transform the AEC industry, specifically focusing on applications in construction, human-robot collaboration, human-centered design, and design education.
10:00a - 11:30a
TVLab
Panelists
Dr. Houtan Jebelli
Dr. Saleh Kalantari
Dr. Timothy Sandy
Dr. Xi Wang
Moderator
Dr. Arash Adel
A presentation of visual work exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and social justice will be followed by a fireside chat between Diana Nucera (Mother Cyborg) and Catherine Gri iths. We will explore art-based, pedagogical, and organizational strategies supporting critical technology engagement. How do we want to live, work, rest, and play with AI in our lives? What is the impact of data-driven technologies on our relationships and communities? Where is the space for regulation, public debate, and protest in determining new technological imaginaries? What is security today? Who is accountable for the results?
10:00a - 11:00a
Commons
When must a mason invent their own hammer? When must a community organizer create their own way to gather local sentiment? Architects, Urban Planners, and Urban Designers generally are not in the business of creating tools. Instead they predominantly work via a model of service delivery, providing assistance to paying clients, utilizing pre-existing tools like AutoCAD and Rhino. Product design, by contrast is, more common in the sphere of technology and involves the creation of apps and tools such as those mentioned above.
Products of Urbanism is a discussion about what it means to make product for the disciplines of the built environment, how products can reshape practices, and why more architects, planners, and designers should be involved in making products.
Time Location
Participants
11:30a - 12:30p
Bryan Boyer (in person)
Je rey Anderson (zoom)
Nneka Sobers (in person)
Gibson/Martelli collaborate to develop interactive, immersive installations that explore perception, embodiment and presence in extended reality. Martelli is a programmer and visual artist for virtual environments. Gibson is a choreographer and movement scholar with a background as a dancer/choreographer, informing her approach to working with media. Gibson/Martelli use improvisation and interaction to explore the relationships of figure & landscape, figureground perception with prominent themes of camouflage and illusion, with extended reality and real and virtual sites creating ‘new spaces for performance’.
CENTRO is an educational institution for creativity based in Mexico City. Through its programs it advances the aesthetics for the metaverse through new educational experiences in XR technologies. These technologies o er exciting opportunities for collaboration, allowing the exploration of digital materiality and its potential for transcoding media in creative works; by embracing XR, creative professionals can push the limits of what is possible and discover new ways to express their ideas to expand and growth co-creation in di erent creative fields.
Snap to Grid is an installation which explores the borders between physical and virtual spaces. An immersive, audiovisual experience that allows visitors to discover synergies between musical temporality, speculative architecture in virtual reality and immersive technologies. The narrative of the work and production process developed for Snap to Grid, highlights the possibilities of a transdisciplinary approach and specialized technological knowledge as part of contemporary creative practices. The installation was designed by the artists Malitzin Cortés (CNDSD) and Iván Abreu, who worked in collaboration with students and teachers from the following undergraduate programs: Digital Media and Technology, Textile Design and Fashion, Interior Architecture, and Marketing and Advertising.
6:45p - 7:45p
Saturday 11 MarchMonday 13 March (all day)
CMYK/ Commons/ TVLAB
Ayaz Basrai
Pierre-Christophe Gam
Gibson/Martelli
Detroit Free Press, July 21st 2035
TOGUNA WORLD and the Sanctuary of Dreams
OnboardO BoardOverboard
One of the superpowers of Speculative Fiction is its ability to engage with the extremes, challenge the status quo, and free up the design process from the narrow confines it oftentimes finds itself in. In this workshop we will collaboratively populate, through deep research and quick visualization, an edition of the Detroit Free Press for the 21st of July, 2035. This newspaper of the future will contain our collectively projected futures, ranging across a wide range of cultural future-casting and informed stories and scenarios, allowing us to poke our heads out into the Future and look around at the mad, nuanced, messy and eccentric world of the Future.
Saturday, March 11
Sunday, March 12
Monday, March 13
TOGUNA WORLD and the Sanctuary of Dreams
What does our ideal future hold? In this future-dreaming workshop, groups of participants are invited to consider how we could Love, Eat, Pray, Play and Dream in the context of an ideal future, with the end goal of materializing through their medium of choice, such as 3d printing, AI, and renderings.
Time Location Host
Saturday, March 11
Sunday, March 12
9:00a - 5:00p
9:00a
5:00p
Integrating conceptual and practical experimentation, this workshop asks can virtual reality become a performance space, a conversation between mapping, identity and ephemerality. Participants are invited to consider blending the physical and digital, where embodied design evokes kinaesthetic awareness and impacts ‘immersant’ behaviour, demanding di erent forms of engagement.
Saturday, March 11
Sunday, March 12
Monday, March 13
9:00a - 5:00p
9:00a - 5:00p
12:00p - 1:00p
All day 3:30p 2:30p
day 3:30p - 4:00p 2:30p - 6:30p
Varied Commons
TVLab
Mixed Feelings
Free Dirt
Empathy in Point Clouds
Are we done with remote interactions? Now that the tech giants want us to embrace the metaverse, should we reflexively reject it? Is architecture, with all of its messy materiality and embedded power relations, still more desirable than “Zoom School?” Or is there still something exciting about the possibility of mixed-presence, mixed-reality experiences? Hasn’t streaming culture proven that it organizes new audiences? Can architecture advance the radical possibilities of this new mediated world?
Admittedly, we have mixed feelings.
Beginning from this ethical ambivalence, students will build a critical position on architecture’s relationship to mediated interactions. Through an open-ended, hands-on, collective approach, students designed and produced a mixedpresence, mixed-reality event. Making extensive use of the new TVLab and other available emerging technologies, this media experiment could suggest new models for college events like final reviews, symposia, and lectures
Faculty Lead
Thom Moran
Students
Jutang Gao
Zelda Hu
Jiyoon Ko
Zoe Kuo
Seunghun Lee
Chengxiang Li
Yanyu Liu
Linhao Luo
Iman Messado
Tam Nguyen
Brian Smith
Yikai Su
Zejun Wu
Jianing Yin
Xuetong Zhai
Ruiying Zhang
Wenyi Zhang
Yalan Zhang
FREE DIRT by Leah Wulfman is a Mixed Presence, Mixed Reality Installation. The project utilizes invasive plant species (weeds downloaded from Quixel Bridge and seeds found in local yards and forests), interactive robotics, Twitch Chat Commands, fallen tree branches (fashioned into a primitive hut-like roomscale VR space), and free dirt from Craigslist Free to create a massively interactive game and garden, where architecture origin myths are replayed, made and destroyed.
The origin stories and practices of Architecture are tethered to notions of stability in relation to and reflective of the natural world. This project locates itself within our world that is ever more capturable and ever more realistically rendered and simulated, all amidst total ecological collapse. Creating a living, alternative future and garden of invasive species, FREE DIRT develops a layered physical, digital multiverse from weeds, where ecology and technology are placed into communion within an unruly, self-fragilizing ecosystem.
Time Location Participants
Commons
Faculty Lead
Leah Wulfman
Students
Jake Brown Environment Artist & Prototyping
Zimin Lu Robotics
Spencer Reay Game Development & Prototyping
Jiabao Zhu 3D Modeling & Fabrication
(above) LOP2_Mardy; (below) LOP2_Feiling2
Robert Adams and Dawn Gilpin
Empathy in Point Clouds is a cross disciplinary team exploring design through point clouds generated from 3D laser scanning of large-scale landscapes, buildings, objects, and situations. EIPC team writes and refines workflows and methods to integrate LiDAR scanning, photogrammetry, and XR technologies to architectural education. Gaming engines such as Unreal Engine enable worldbuilding of spatial narratives and speculative fictions. Physical models of spatial ideas are scanned and integrated into the site point cloud to not only access site measure but also views from and light modulation of apertures, and a general experience of the space as anticipated by the author.
A point cloud is a set of data points usually displayed in an X, Y, and Z Cartesian coordinate system. Each data point represents the surface of an object, so the generation of point clouds is often associated with survey work. Where a detailed image of a surface is required. 3D laser scanners are used to capture a 3D object, the output from the laser scanner, the raw point cloud data, which may be further processed into a polygonal mesh through a process called surface reconstruction. The object mesh would then be further augmented by adding texture mapping and other lighting e ects to produce, if desired, a photo realistic model of the object. It is the raw point clouds and the story behind the points that form the inspiration. Point clouds are a catalyst for wonder and enquiry, providing new perspectives across traditional views. Point clouds force us to wonder what we are looking at. Where and how was this image created? What’s the story behind the data?
Supported by FEAST Faculty Engineering Arts Student Teams/MDP Multidisciplinary Programs
Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning Emerging Technologies Group, Duderstadt Center, and Center for Academic Innovation XR Lab.
Time Location Participants
2:30p - 6:30p
TVLab
Faculty Leads Participants: 2023 EIPC_FEAST
Robert Adams
Dawn Gilpin
Sophia Chen Architecture
Qilmeg Dooudatcz Architecture
Rishad Hasan Electrical Engineering
Mardy Hillengas Architecture
Sang Won Kang Architecture
Xin Li Architecture
Yipeng Lin Computer Science + Engineering
Ting-Yu Ling Architecture
Lili Omilian Art + Design
Matthew Priskorn Computer Engineering
Edward Rapa Architecture
Junde Song Computer Science
Nicole Tooley Architecture
Dr. Michelle Aebersold is a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator and a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She is currently an XR Faculty Innovator in Residence through the University of Michigan XR Initiative at the Center for Academic Innovation. Dr. Aebersold has extensive experience in using a variety of simulation learning methods including Extended Realities to improve the care of patients through caregiver education and training. She has developed the Simulation Model to Improve Learner and Health Outcomes (SMILHO).
Iván Abreu’s practice combines art, design and technology through multiple media such as electronic devices, software, video or graphics, among others. He is interested in the use of technology to transform specific contexts and situations in order to explore new sensations for the audience. Thus, technology makes it possible to unite experiences and modify, depending on the context, the relationships between cause and e ect of a certain situation.
Robert Adams is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He also teaches in U-M’s Stamps School of Art and Design and chairs U-M’s Initiative on Disability Studies. His current design interests focus on the intersection of architecture, civic infrastructure, and disability culture within a bio-psycho-socio-techo conceptual model where bodies, wearable technologies, and augmented environments coalesce. The work is aimed at sharpening architectural strategies to draw out and reconsider the e icacy of disability through advanced geometry, immersive perceptual configurations, and responsive networks.
Dr. Arash Adel is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he directs the ADR Laboratory. His laboratory conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of design, computation, and robotics, further contributing to resilient, sustainable, and low-carbon construction outlooks and achievements. At the core of his comprehensive research is investigating human-machine collaborative processes, which tackle fundamental questions related to the future of the design and construction industries and their potential to have a broader impact on inclusive and equitable building culture. Adel received his Master’s in Architecture from Harvard University and his Doctorate in Architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Je rey Anderson
Pratt Institute, NY; UPenn, PA;
Mancini Du y, NY
Je rey Anderson is an educator, architectural designer, and AR/VR software developer. He currently at Pratt Institute and the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the lead software developer in the Design Lab at Mancini Du y where he conducts design research and develops architectural visualization tools. His current software development work focuses on creating new forms of physical and virtual collaboration that empower all members of the design process. His research focuses on using technology to create new relationships between users, architecture, and its context through interaction, sensing and feedback, and mixed reality.
Martin Andrews is the Associate Dean (Global Engagement & Education Partnerships) for the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Portsmouth. His work developing strategies for international recruitment and exchange, international student experience, transnational education arrangements and global research and innovation initiatives. Andrews’ research focuses on teaching and learning in Architectural Education, specifically the tutor training of architect-educators.
Bryan Boyer is cofounder of the architecture and strategic design studio Dash Marshall, as well as Assistant Professor of Practice in Architecture and Director of the Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology degree at Taubman College. Boyer’s professional background mixes design, technology, and government innovation to understand and envision the ways in which technology enables urban ways of life.
Ayaz Basrai is Co-founder at The Busride Design Studio, a leading architecture and interior design firm in India. In 2006, he set up The Busride with his architect brother Zameer (CEPT / MIT ), as an independent design studio specializing in the design and creation of built environments, ranging from hospitality and entertainment, film and production, exhibitions and installations, institutional and architectural environments. More recently, Basrai heads The Busride Lab in Goa, working with Speculative Fiction, Heritage Conservation and their ongoing India Futures Project, trying to visualize and birth meaningful Indian Futures. The Lab follows a promiscuously collaborative model, and is an active part of the emerging creative and cultural landscape in Goa, working towards creating meaningful public space, supporting activism and educational initiatives across Goa and India.
Roberto Cabezas Hernández is a transmedia software developer, researcher and educator. Roberto is the Creative Technology Director at CENTRO. He creates and develops software tools for music composition, animation, immersive design and interactive audiovisual performance to explore new ideas on hybrid computational models for human-machine cooperation and social accountability for technology development. Roberto’s passion is for developing softwarehuman-centered solutions with a special interest on how they can expand creativity.
Malitzin Cortés is an architect, researcher, experimental musician and audiovisual artist. Her work adopts transdiscipline and technology in contemporary multimedia practices. Her projects are developed between live coding, expanded cinema, installation, 3D animation, generative art, sound design, experimental music and sound art.
Dr. Antonino Di Raimo Ph.D., FHEA currently teaches at the University of Portsmouth, his main research interest resides in the impact of computationalism and radical ecological thought in architecture design, where he tries to investigate the human body as the link between the computational and analog dimensions involved in architecture. Di Raimo’s research is based on Cybernetic Sciences and their prompt consequences like Cognitive and Embodied/Radical Embodied Cognitive Sciences through American and European contexts.
Pierre-Christophe Gam was trained as an interior architect, specializing in art direction for various companies. He creates new narratives inspired by ancient myths stemming from Africa pre-colonial heritage, which he brings to life within interactive, physical and virtual spaces, within which the public can learn, connect and dream. Gam sees his practice as a continuation of the pre-colonial West African traditions where griots, guardians of the memory of the community, were passed on through initiation songs and stories.
Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli (Gibson/Martelli), are the first winners of Taubman College TVLab’s Artist-in-Residence programme. Martelli is a programmer, software designer, and visual artist for virtual environments, and Gibson is a choreographer and movement scholar. Gibson/Martelli collaborate to develop interactive immersive installations that explore perception, embodiment and presence in extended reality. The duo address the position of the self– intertwining tropes of videogames and traditions of figure & landscape. Ideas of player, performer and visitor are explored through machine learning, live simulation, performance capture, installation and moving image to create immersive virtual realities.
Dawn Gilpin is a lecturer in Architecture at the University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning where she teaches drawing, design, and representation. Co-founder and director of Adams + Gilpin, she works on a range of projects and creative endeavors focused on the reconfiguration of the status of accessibility within domesticity.
Catherine Gri iths is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan with a joint appointment between Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Digital Studies Institute. Gri iths is a media artist, designer, and researcher exploring critical code and algorithmic aesthetics in the context of machine learning ethics. By creating simulations, short films, and software applications, her hybrid practice-theory-based creative research attempts to make palpable invisible computational forces that shape power and social dynamics. Drawing on the legacy of generative art, the recent rise in artificial intelligence, and critical theory, she seeks to contribute to an emerging arts knowledge.
Andrew M. Ibrahim MD, MSc is assistant professor of surgery and architecture at the University of Michigan and Chief Medical O icer at HOK. Dr. Ibrahim’s research at the interface of healthcare, policy evaluation and architecture has resulted in numerous publications, book chapters, international presentations and appointment to the editorial boards at the Annals of Surgery and the JAMA Network.
Houtan Jebelli, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architectural Engineering and an A iliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Robotic, Automation, and Intelligent Sensing (RAISE) Lab. His research group at Penn State explores novel approaches that infuse human physiology into robotic control and motion planning systems to augment awareness and adaptation between workers and robots.
Saleh Kalantari
Saleh Kalantari, Ph.D., EDAC, is an assistant professor in Cornell University’s Department of Design and Environmental Analysis. He is the director of the Design and Augmented Intelligence Lab (DAIL) at Cornell, where his research group investigates human–technology partnerships in the design process, and the resulting opportunities for innovation and creativity. Dr. Kalantari’s work promotes generative-design approaches and the adoption of new design technologies to improve the relationship between people and their created environment. His two main focus areas are: developing cyber–human systems to improve the application of designers’ ingenuity, skills, and competencies in the creation of a unique product; and using biometric sensory data and novel computational techniques to more e ectively understand human responses to architectural intervention during the design process.
Garciela Kasep is the coordinator of CENTRO university’s Creative Economy Research Center (CIEC) and co-editor-inchief of the institution’s peer-reviewed academic journal, Economía Creativa. Amongst being a researcher, curator and cultural promoter, Kasep is currently studying a PHD in Art History at the UNAM, developing a research project on revisionist history with a focus on art practices and reflections on the urban space. Kasep has collaborated with Taubman College, as a guest participant at the “Emergent Cultural Infrastructure at the Margins of the Megalopolis” and “Something in Common” seminars.
Ann Arbor, MI
Joy Knoblauch is an Associate Professor of Architecture teaching history and theory of architecture as an exploration of architecture’s engagement with politics and science. Knoblauch’s research interests include design and the human sciences, and the interaction between architecture, government and population. Previous research produced a study of the newly softened institutional environments of the Great Society era in the United States which served as sites of biopolitical research, shaping a new direction for the discipline of architecture toward an enriched understanding of the heterogeneous occupants of architecture. Her current research concerns the neo-functionalist diagrams used to design post war hospitals.
Ann Arbor, MI
Thom Moran is an architect and designer, and an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Moran is a principal of the Ann Arbor-based studio T+E+A+M. His practice involves solo projects and several ongoing collaborations that each explore di erent issues related to material experimentation and fabrication.
Upali Nanda is director of research for HKS Inc. and associate professor of practice in architecture at the Taubman College. She also serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Advanced Design Research and Evaluation. Her research interests lies in: design and health, healthcare architecture, sensory design, point of decision design, architecture & neuroscience, evidence-based design, workplace wellbeing, living labs.
Mother Cybort (Diana Nucera) is a Detroit-based artist, DJ, and educator. Mother Cyborg’s music blends house, techno, electronica, dance and ambient trip-hop as well as featuring her own cello playing. She has described her music as connecting to her work in technology, with the goal of creating space for emotions to be present and to elevate the consciousness. Nucera founded the Detroit Community Technology Project, a sponsored project of the Allied Media Projects that aims to empower communities to use media and technology as a way of exploring solutions to challenges faced.
MI
Jonathan Rule is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning where he teaches in the areas of design, construction, and digital technologies. Rule is co-founder of the studio Morcillo Pallares + Rule Arquitectos. His research focuses on materials, construction systems, and building design and technology.
Emily Rogers is a protean producer who actively works as a songwriter, musician, dancer, choreographer, event curator, musical director, host and DJ. These skills have administered national and international performance opportunities, record releases, recording sessions and collaborations. In addition to her personal creative endeavors, Emily contributes to the vibrancy of the Detroit Community by curating inclusive concerts, recordings sessions, jam sessions, micro festivals and multi-media events. Her work was recently awarded the 2020 Gilda Snowden Emerging Artist Award from the Kresge Arts Foundation. Emily Rogers has an eclectic catalog of available music, a plethora of performance chronicles, fantastic stories and artistic adventures.
Dr. Timothy Sandy received his PhD in robotics, as a part of the NCCR Digital Fabrication, in 2018. His research focuses on robotic building construction, with interests in robotic system design, state estimation and sensor fusion, motion planning and control for mobile manipulators, and visual tracking of digital building models. In 2020, he was awarded an ETH Pioneer Fellowship and is now building a spino to provide augmented reality guidance tools to construction workers.
Nneka Sobers (she/hers) is an urban designer and civic technologist who strives to help citymakers leverage technology to increase public good. Working at the intersection of urban planning, design research, and product development, Sobers takes a systems-level and humancentered approach to developing digital tools that help make city systems more accessible, inclusive, and equitable. Sobers’ process includes conducting and translating urbanism and ux research into data-driven product design and development pipelines. Currently, Sobers is the Research + Program Manager at the Jacobs Urban Tech Hub @ Cornell Tech. Prior to her time at Cornell Tech, she was a product manager at NYC Planning Labs, as well as co-founded a civic tech startup.
Xi
Dr. Xi Wang is an Assistant professor at Texas A&M University’s School of Architecture and Department of Construction Science. Her research focuses on construction automation and robotics, including human-robot interaction, learning from demonstration, robot and infrastructure intelligence, and human factors while interacting with intelligent agents.
Ann Arbor, MI
Ishan Pal Singh is a licensed architect (India), educator and the Design Technologist for the Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. His most recent work explores architecture’s blended future by experimenting with extended reality and social media tools. Currently he is leading the e orts in the development of the Taubman Visualization Lab (TVLab), as well as producer and technician of numerous digital and hybrid events held at Taubman College.
Leah Wulfman is a Carrier Bag architect, educator, game designer, digital puppeteer, and occasional writer. Trained as an architect, Wulfman has been assembling hybrid virtual and physical spaces in order to prototype new relationships to technology and nature, as well as challenge normative ideologies so often reinforced by technology and architecture. Leah is now at the University of Michigan, where they are currently the Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the Taubman College School of Architecture.
CEPT University
University of Portsmouth
U-M Center for Academic Innovation
U-M Arts Initiative
U-M XR Initiative
U-M Taubman College
U-M Duderstadt Center
Documentation
Dori Sumter Photography
Hawk Media
Anya Sirota
Anya Sirota is an architectural designer, Associate Professor, Associate Dean of Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and founding principal of Akoaki.
Jacob Comerci
Jacob is a designer, educator and Project Manager for Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Ishan Pal Singh is a licensed architect (India), educator, and the Design Technologist for Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Man Lam Cheng
Holly Chu
Zach Keller
